Welcome to my website!
My lifelong interest in language includes teaching and learning, research and writing, and consulting for attorneys on matters of law and language.
These activities intersect. What I learn from research I have reported in my weekly posts for the Lingua Franca blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education (2011-2018) and my books on language aimed at general readers. My expertise is in American English, past and present. For attorneys I apply this expertise to close analysis of language and its use in particular contexts.
I am a professor of English at MacMurray College. For 37 years I was also executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, retiring in 2018.
I am author of seven books on language, the two most recent being OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word and From Skedaddle to Selfie: Words of the Generations.My publisher for these is Oxford University Press.
And the eighth is on its way: The Life of Guy: Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Unlikely History of an Indispensable Word, scheduled for publication November 5, 2019, the 414th anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason. It's the incredible true story of how England's greatest terrorist lives on more than ever today, thanks to you guys.
In 2018, two professional websites took my creations as inspiration for their own productions. For Vox, Coleman Lowndes managed to encapsulate my whole book on OK in a brilliantly illustrated fast-moving five-minute video, "Why We Say OK."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UnIDL-eHOs
An illustrated history of the American Dialect Society's annual vote on Words of the Year, which I began, was created by another website, Insider.
https://www.thisisinsider.com/every-word-of-the-year-2018-10#1997-millennium-bug-8
In June 2018, I gave an invited presentation on "The Language of Student Protests and Behavior" at an Atlanta conference on Diversity, Civility, and the Liberal Arts: An Institute for Faculty and Administrators at Independent Colleges and Universities.
Get in touch with me at [email protected].
'.
My lifelong interest in language includes teaching and learning, research and writing, and consulting for attorneys on matters of law and language.
These activities intersect. What I learn from research I have reported in my weekly posts for the Lingua Franca blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education (2011-2018) and my books on language aimed at general readers. My expertise is in American English, past and present. For attorneys I apply this expertise to close analysis of language and its use in particular contexts.
I am a professor of English at MacMurray College. For 37 years I was also executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, retiring in 2018.
I am author of seven books on language, the two most recent being OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word and From Skedaddle to Selfie: Words of the Generations.My publisher for these is Oxford University Press.
And the eighth is on its way: The Life of Guy: Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Unlikely History of an Indispensable Word, scheduled for publication November 5, 2019, the 414th anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason. It's the incredible true story of how England's greatest terrorist lives on more than ever today, thanks to you guys.
In 2018, two professional websites took my creations as inspiration for their own productions. For Vox, Coleman Lowndes managed to encapsulate my whole book on OK in a brilliantly illustrated fast-moving five-minute video, "Why We Say OK."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UnIDL-eHOs
An illustrated history of the American Dialect Society's annual vote on Words of the Year, which I began, was created by another website, Insider.
https://www.thisisinsider.com/every-word-of-the-year-2018-10#1997-millennium-bug-8
In June 2018, I gave an invited presentation on "The Language of Student Protests and Behavior" at an Atlanta conference on Diversity, Civility, and the Liberal Arts: An Institute for Faculty and Administrators at Independent Colleges and Universities.
Get in touch with me at [email protected].
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